Implementing Sustainable Development: Strategies and Initiatives in High Consumption Societies

Implementing Sustainable Development: Strategies and Initiatives in High Consumption Societies

Abstract

This study was carried out on implementing sustainable development: strategies and initiatives in high consumption societies. Most of the projects and programs set by the government for development are not sustainable because the beneficiaries are not actively involved (participation). The study uses the survey research method which includes the use of instruments of interviews, questionnaire administration, and using a checklist of issues for observation as primary sources, while the secondary sources comprise files, reports, minute books, budgets, etc. on activities, decisions, financial reports, pictures of community development projects and programs of the Local Government and Community Development Associations. Data collected were presented and analyzed using tables and simple percentages. The study found that most government plans and implementation of Community development projects and programs did not properly involve the beneficiaries, from its initial stage to completion. We also found that there is the problem of misplacement of priority by the government, as to the pressing need of the people at a time is not what the government is providing them with. The Local Government projects and programs are not sustained or maintained because the supposed beneficiaries do not see it as their own since they lack any sense of ownership during initiation and even implementation of the projects and programs. To this end, this study recommends that people`s participation philosophy of mobilizing resources and organizing the community people high consumption societies to have cogent interests in providing for their wellbeing, need to be properly emphasized and utilized. This will stimulate the feeling of ownership of such development projects/programs by benefiting communities and by implication promote sustainable development goals. Government at various strata including the federal, state, and most especially local governments, have to come to terms with the fact that there is inherent importance in “the participatory development theory” which advocates community populace active participation in decision-making and implementation of policies that affect and mold their lives. This will ensure that projects/programs of government are exactly the felt needs of benefiting communities.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION  

1.1. Background to the study 

Poverty is a multi-dimensional societal phenomenon in which people cannot actively live their desired lives, explore resources to make a living for themselves – a situation that incapacitates them from active participation in the socio-economic and socio-political equations of their society. United Nations (1995) adopted two definitions of poverty: Absolute poverty, a situation conditioned by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food in appropriate quantity and quality, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education, and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services. On the other hand, Overall poverty in its multi-conceptual forms, including lack of source of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable living, hunger and malnutrition, ill-health, limited or lack of access to fundamental education, increased morbidity and mortality from illness, homelessness, and inadequate housing, unsafe environments, and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterized by a lack of participation in decision-making and civil, social, and cultural life. WeisfeldAdams and Andrzejewski (2018) revealed that according to the World Bank (2018), people living on less than

US$1 per day are living in extreme poverty, and people who earn less than US$2 a day are in moderate poverty. The study further stated that UNDP (2017) revealed that approximately one billion people live on less than US$1 a day. About 2.6 billion live on less than US$2 a day. This amounts to 40% of the world’s population. In SubSaharan Africa, 41% of the population lives on less than US$1 a day (Population Reference Bureau, 2016).

Poverty reduction has received increased focus in the development debate in the past two decades. Progress on poverty reduction has become a major measure of the success of development policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, the preoccupation was with growth, the need to grow the economies and incomes. Thus, growth was seen as a prerequisite for improved welfare. Many developing countries in the 1980s implemented structural adjustment programs (SAP) aimed at enhancing growth. Following these programs, many countries recorded positive real growth rates. The development literature in the 1990s was dominated by the view that growth is central to any strategy aimed at poverty reduction. Studies suggest that countries that made noticeable progress on poverty reduction were those which recorded fast and high growth rates (World Bank 2000, Dollar and Kraay 2000).

Across the globe, especially in third world countries, people wallow in abject poverty – a cankerworm against growth and development. Sometimes, people go to bed with an empty stomach without hope of what to eat the following day and perhaps, malnutrition becomes customary. Some don’t have shelter over their heads; health care delivery system and electricity are alien to some communities; pipe-borne water, lack of qualitative or limited access to or total lack of education, and endemic diseases have taken over some territories; lots of mothers and children die during childbirth daily, some environment is not conducive to human habitation due to environmental degradation; while some still live in the stone age societies where there is no form of civilization, presence of social discrimination and exclusion as well as the lack of participation in decision making. There are many developing countries in the world with precarious development indices. For example, it is said that more than 1.2 billion people or about 20 percent of the world population live or survive on less than US 1 per day (Shetty, 2015).

The fight against poverty has been a central plank of development planning since independence in 1960 and about fifteen ministries, fourteen specialized agencies, and nineteen donor agencies and non-governmental organizations have been involved in the decades of this crusade but about 70 percent of Nigerians still live in poverty, (Soludo, 2013). Literature has unanimously agreed that successive government interventions have failed to achieve the objectives for which they were established (Ovwasa, 2000; Adesopo, 2018; Omotola, 2018). The failure to effectively combat the problem has largely been blamed on infrastructural decay, endemic corruption, and poor governance and accountability (Okonjo-Iweala, et al 2013).

Community development is a strategy or approach for improvement that is directed towards a specific field of social development requiring action on the part of the people to improve their condition of living, whether social, economic, or cultural. Its effect in the field of social development is socially conditioned since it brings about awareness and the improvement of relationships between individuals, groups, communities, and organizations to ensure sustained development. In this light, from a humanitarian perspective, it may be seen as a search for community, mutual aid, social support, and human liberation in an alienating, oppressive, competitive, and individualistic society. In its more pragmatic institutional sense, it may be viewed as a means for mobilizing communities to join state or institutional initiatives that are aimed at alleviating poverty, solving social problems, strengthening families, fostering democracy, and achieving modernization and socio-economic development (Campfens cited in Ohiani, 2016). Therefore, an attempt is made to Implementing Sustainable Development: Strategies and Initiatives in High Consumption Societies, with particular reference to the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

1.2. Statement of the Research Problem

It is important to recognize that most of the challenges of development in Nigeria are a clear manifestation of the weakness in the strategies adopted by the government, from Federal, State, and Local Governments. Most of the development strategies adopted by the government are mostly those that are top-down in their approaches. For example, the development programs to empower the people or enhance community development from time, such as DFRRI, NAPEP NEEDS with state and local versions are all not people-friendly, since the people were not involved or carried along. This makes community development suffer and thereby frustrates sustainable development goals. This is because the input from the people was not included, even though the development was targeted at them (Obetta and Charity, 2012).

The people lacked a sense of belonging to any of government projects or programs, they never felt as if they were part of the development effort of their communities, which affected the maintenance of those projects, leading to the problem of not sustaining those facilities or programs put in place to serve the people. In some communities in Chikun Local Government, like any other communities within the country, there are projects initiated and implemented by the government that is no longer serving the purpose which they were meant for because the community’s inputs were neglected. For example, the solar boreholes of Ungwan Bije-Kakau ward, the solar borehole in Sarki Street Ungwan Romi Yelwa/Romi Ward worked for only a year and are no longer functioning. Also in the Kakau community, about seven boreholes were sunk by the L.G. only the one in front of the house of a member of the house of representative representing the constituency is functioning. Most government projects and programs provided by the government within the local government area are not properly maintained, thereby leading to the problem of sustainability.

It is mostly a top-down approach to community development, which makes projects and programs unsustainable due to misplaced priorities, what the people need, is not what is given to them, but what the donors feel they need.

It is against this background that the study explores how, and what model to be used for community development to serve as a veritable strategy for sustainable development goals in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

1.3. Research questions

1. How relevant were the community development projects and programs on sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area?
2. To what extent can community participation lead to sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area?

1.4. Objective of the study 

The major objective of this study is to examine the implementation of sustainable development: strategies and initiatives in high consumption societies in Chikun Local Government Area, Kaduna State from 2015 to 2020.

The specific objectives of this study are to:

1. Determine the relevance of community development projects and programs and their effects on sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area;
2. Examine the effects of community participation on sustainable development goals in Chikun Local Government Area Kaduna State.

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